Keira Knightley says she and her family have COVID: 'I'm feeling pretty rubbish'

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Keira Knightley and her family have COVID-19.

The Pirates of the Caribbean actress shared the health update in an interview with the Telegraph's Stella magazine.

"I’ve got COVID and I’m feeling pretty rubbish," the 36-year-old told the British outlet.

Knightley, who said she's double vaccinated, has been quarantining at home in London, where her husband, musician James Righton, and two daughters, Edie, 6, and Delilah, 2, are positive as well.

She quipped that Righton was asymptomatic and "being very smug about it — he is convinced it's because he's one of those cold-water swimmers and I’m not."

Knightley did the interview to promote her dark comedy Silent Night. The film is about being on the brink of an environmental disaster. Filming began in the U.K. in February 2020 — just before the coronavirus pandemic began.

"It was really weird," Knightley said. "We were making a film about an experience and then the experience suddenly started happening around us. We were filming scenes about the shops running out of food at the same time as the news was becoming full of stories that all of the toilet paper had gone. We were desperately trying to finish so that [co-star Lily-Rose Depp] could get back to Paris to be with her mum [Vanessa Paradis] before they closed the borders. It was incredibly strange for everyone."

While the film is dark on its own, the timing — as the pandemic rages on and now Omicron variant cases spread — makes Knightley think the film needs a disclaimer.

"I think it should come with a warning, because now everybody is coming to the film with a lived experience, hopefully not as horrific as this one, but it has suddenly become a lot more raw," she said.

Knightley also spoke about dropping out of Apple TV+'s Essex Serpent last year over COVID-related child-care concerns. She was replaced by Claire Danes.

While it was something she "really wanted to do," Knightley explained that filming took place when "you couldn't travel between different parts of the U.K. My youngest was 1, and suddenly I might be stuck on the other side of the country and I wouldn't be able to get to her. I couldn't do that."

So she paused on working, holing up at home with her family and making the most of the break.

"There's a part of me that went: This is great, maybe I should never work again," she said with a laugh. "Another part of me that was like: Whoa, I need to get back to work very quickly. But it felt lovely, because we're a family that had, up until then, moved around the whole time. I feel frazzled right now because we're trapped in the house with COVID, but if you talk to me in about two weeks' time, I'll see it with rose-tinted glasses again."

Once recovered, Knightley and her family are expected to travel to the U.S. in December for her next role in Boston Strangler, a crime drama based on the real-life case of the serial killer. They will be in Boston for an expected three-month shoot with her elder daughter going to school there and Righton looking after young Delilah. (They don't have a nanny.)

"The prospect feels impossible right now," Knightley admitted. "I want to do it, but I've been a full-time mum for the last 19 months. I haven't left the little one. She doesn't know life without me putting her down for a nap. Already I’m going, 'Oh my God, how are they going to cope?' Now, obviously, they are going to cope fine, it's me that’s going to be in pieces."